Blog Archives

This blog is still really new, and participating in the 30 day book challenge has been such a fantastic way to get used to blogging as well as taking a wonderful trip down memory lane, thinking of books to write about in answer to these questions.

Thank you to everyone who has been reading along with me so far, especially those who have commented, and thanks to Becky from Blogs-Of-A-Bookaholic for the brilliant questions.

Okay, that’s enough of the Oscar speech. I will get on with the post.

There are a lot of books that I haven’t been able to put down, especially when coming to the end. There are some books where I get to a certain point that I will physically not be able to stop until I have finished, no matter what else I need to do or what the time is. I call that point the “run in”.

However, some books I find it very difficult to stop from beginning to end. The last book I read where I genuinely couldn’t put it down and read it all in one sitting was The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.

This is the story of Susie Salmon, who is raped and murdered by her neighbour. Afterwards, she becomes stuck in a kind of limbo, stuck in between earth and heaven where she can build her own world and watch over her family as they struggle to cope with her murder and the fact that her body is never found.

This book grabbed me right from the first line:-

“My name was Salmon, like the fish, first name Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973”.

The writing is so good I couldn’t stop – Alice Sebold deals so sensitively with the issues and the reactions and coping strategies of her family are so real. The glimpses of Susie’s life before she was murdered are so intense, such as her first kiss with Ray. I particularly enjoyed Grandma Lynn, whom Susie had never really warmed to in life but loved her in death as she became the linchpin of the family. I also loved the drama of Susie’s father and sister coming to suspect their neighbour, especially when Lindsay is almost caught snooping in the house. I loved the imagination behind the world that Susie inhabits. I loved the loose endings – those that were tied up and those that weren’t.

This isn’t the kind of book with a massive cliffhanger at the end of every chapter. But still at the end of each chapter I couldn’t help but read on, just because I felt that I knew these people and I wanted to see them all (including Susie who has to come to terms with her own death) come out the other side. So I stayed up to the small hours, devouring every single word.

And that’s that. The 30 day book challenge is over. I hope you have enjoyed reading along. I know I’ve enjoyed writing it.

I love opening lines. I love reading opening lines. I love writing opening lines. I love being given an opening line and freewriting from there. It is the rest of the story after the opening lines that causes me problems!

When I browse for books in bookshops, I not only read the blurb at the back but I always read the first sentence. If I want a book from the blurb, I will probably not reject it if the opening sentence doesn’t grab me. But for anything I am 50/50 about, it comes down to that opening sentence – if it grabs me, I will buy it, if it doesn’t, it goes back on the shelf.

The first exercise in my writing challenge deals with beginnings which aim to make the reader feel that they are plunged right into the story. The opening sentences that I have written are not related to any characters or stories that I already have in my head or my notebooks. Some are semi-inspired by real life, some are from little kernels of ideas that I haven’t yet thought out how to develop, some are completely random. However, my aim with all of them is to start in the middle of the action (even if I’m not quite sure what that action is yet!)

Here they are:-

The only reason I had anything to do with Ray is because the library had flooded one Monday in June.

The last time I really knew myself was when we went for lunch with the little white dogs.

I knew it was bad news as soon as he opened the door.

The election was over and I failed to get a single vote. I didn’t even vote for myself.

My mind went blank as the curtains rose.

It was only a week ago that Ellie and I liberated the turtle from the old man’s garden and already we’ve added a goldfish and a cat to our collection.

My mother always said I would be ruined by my handbags in the end.

In the prison, we were known as “Nelson’s ladies”.

I didn’t think I was famous until the day that the photographer was waiting outside my Uncle’s house to capture a picture of me in my uniform.

Reading back over these, I think that 2 and 4 probably achieve the objective of starting right in the middle of the action the best, but out of the list, I am most interested in seeing where number 5 will go.

So that is my effort. Here are some of my favourite first sentences from my bookshelves:-

“Most days I wish I was a British pound coin instead of an African girl” (The Other Hand, Chris Cleeve)

“My grandfather, the knife fighter, killed two Germans before he was eighteen” (City of Thieves, David Benioff)

“My name was Salmon, like the fish; Susie first. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973” (The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold)

“Things started to fall apart at home when my brother, Jaja, did not go to communion and Papa flung his heavy missal across the room and broke the figurines on the etagere” (Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche)

Any one of my favourite ever openings, on the strength of which I bought a book that I previously had no desire to read:-

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents ere occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kiind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” (The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger)

I was sold when I read that first sentence, just for the directness of it and the authenticity of the character’s voice. After reading all of these opening lines, I knew that I was in good hands for the rest of the book.

The opening lines are the writer’s first chance to introduce the character and to create something engaging to make the reader want to read on. To leave the reader with questions to which they need to find the answers. To make the reader want to know the character better. A story can’t rely on it’s opening line alone – the rest of the story needs to deliver what the opening line promises. If the writer is able to achieve this, then as readers, we are in for a treat.